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Distance Education

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www.promoteeducation.com

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Topic of Discussions• What is Distance Education?• Levels of Distance Education• Why Distance Education?• Components of a Working Distance Education

System• A Student at the Center of the System• Five Generations of Distance Education• Technologies and Media• Design and Development of Web-Based

Courses

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What is Distance Education?• Distance education is planned learning that

normally occurs in a different place from teaching, requiring special course design and instruction techniques, communication through various technologies, and special organizational and administrative arrangement

• Distance education is the study of:– Learning and teaching– Learning that is planned and not accidental– Learning that is normally in a different place from

teaching– Communication through various technologies

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Levels of Distance Education• Single Mode Institutes

– Distance education is the sole activity of the single mode institution

– All faculty and staff of the institution are exclusively devoted to distance education

– Example Athabasca (http://www.athabascau.ca) is Canada leading singe mode distance-education university

• Dual Mode Institutes– On campus and online– Sets up a special unit alongside the recourses dedicated to

conventional teaching– Example: public agencies, voluntary organizations and

businesses that are not primarily educational institutions• U.S National Part Services (http://www.telnps.net)• Pennsylvania State University (http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu)

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Levels of Distance Education• Individual Teachers

– Conventional institutions distrusting their teaching by distance education methods do so without a especial unit

– Lead individual teachers design and delver their own courses

– No special unit• Virtual Universities and Consortia

– The term “virtual” is used very loosely and applied at times to all three types of organizations

• National Technological University (http://www.ntu.edu) , consortium of 50 universties

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Why Distance Education?• Increasing access to learning and training opportunities• Providing opportunities for updating skills• Improving the cost effectiveness of education resources• Supporting the quality of exiting educational structures• Enhancing the capacity of the education system• Balancing inequalities between age groups• Delivering educational campaign to specific target

audience• Providing emergency training for key target groups• Expanding the capacity for education in new subject

areas

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Why Distance Education?

• Offering combination of education with work and family life

• Adding an international dimension to the educational experience

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Components of a Working Distance Education System

• A source of knowledge that is to be taught and learned• A subsystem to structure this into material and actives

for students hat we will call courses• Another subsystem that delivers the courses to learners• Teachers who interact with learners as they use these

material in making their knowledge• Learners in their different environments• A subsystem that monitors and evaluates outcomes so

that interventions are possible where failure occurs• An organization with a policy and a management

structure to link these different pieces

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A Student at the Center of the System

Instructor

Virtual Library

Other students

Support Services

Course Design Team

Administration

Communication technologies

Distance learner

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Five Generations of Distance Education

• 1st – Correspondence– Instructions delivered by mail

• 2nd – Broadcast radio and television– Radio– Television

• 3rd – Open Universities– Open University in UK

• 4th – Teleconferencing– Satellite and Interactive Video-Conferencing

• 5th - Internet/Web– Computer Networks

• Mainframes• Computer Based Instructions

– Arrival of the Internet and Web-Based Education

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Technologies and Media

• Print• Audio and Video Media• Radio and Television• Teleconferencing• Computer and Web-based learning

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Design and Development of Web-Based Courses

• Authoring Tool– Tools for designing instructions– Example: Flash, Author ware and Director

• Web Documents– Use of programming languages– Example: HTML, Java etc

• Integrated Learning Systems– Blackboard or WebCT

• Web Design Principles

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Design and Development of Web-Based Courses

• Lets view an example– http://oll.depaul.edu

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Bibliography and Reference

• Distance Education – A System View, 2nd edition by Micheal Moore and Grey Kearsley

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distance_education